Robert Horton, Writing About Film

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

About This Site

The Crop Duster has two goals. One is to organize links to my critical work: reviews written for The Herald (Everett, Washington) and Seattle Weekly; and public appearances and TV jobs. Selected past work for Film Comment and elsewhere is also linkified. You may also link to my website of 1980s reviews and learn more about my book on Frankenstein and my graphic novel, ROTTEN.

The second goal is to keep a daily record of films watched, annotated with brisk, brief comments. It's a slightly more advanced version of the movie list I kept, in Flair pen, thumbtacked next to my bed when I was twelve.

Pages

The Party’s Over (Guy Hamilton, 1965). An unusual movie, shot by Hamilton before he went off to make Goldfinger, but held up for release by UK censors. A young American woman (the purposely affectless Louise Sorel) has fallen in with a group of London “beatniks,” prompting a visit from her fiancé (Clifford David – surely you remember him as Beethoven in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure), an upwardly mobile bourgie who works for her wealthy father. That’s Eddie Albert, turning up late in the film (a nicely-written proto-Trump part, a blowhard who asks other people questions and then talks over their replies). Oliver Reed plays the ringleader of the anything-for-kicks beatniks, and as usual with Reed you can’t stop wondering what he’s going to do next. The movie has its sentimental touches but it surprises, too, and some of the storytelling is Rashomon-style conflicting recollections. Screenplay by Marc Behm, whose name is on Help! and Charade. The music, some of it Bond-ish, is by John Barry, with a title tune sung by Annie Ross. Their names aren’t in the credits, but supposedly the film was partly produced by Peter O’Toole and Jack Hawkins.